The Earth, Plants, and Man

The Earth, Plants, and Man PDF Author: Joakim Frederik Schouw
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Natural history
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description

The Earth, Plants, and Man

The Earth, Plants, and Man PDF Author: Joakim Frederik Schouw
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Natural history
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Get Book Here

Book Description


What a Plant Knows

What a Plant Knows PDF Author: Daniel Chamovitz
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374288739
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Explores the secret lives of various plants, from the colors they see to whether or not they really like classical music to their ability to sense nearby danger.

Making Eden

Making Eden PDF Author: David Beerling
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192519212
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Over 7 billion people depend on plants for healthy, productive, secure lives, but few of us stop to consider the origin of the plant kingdom that turned the world green and made our lives possible. And as the human population continues to escalate, our survival depends on how we treat the plant kingdom and the soils that sustain it. Understanding the evolutionary history of our land floras, the story of how plant life emerged from water and conquered the continents to dominate the planet, is fundamental to our own existence. In Making Eden David Beerling reveals the hidden history of Earth's sun-shot greenery, and considers its future prospects as we farm the planet to feed the world. Describing the early plant pioneers and their close, symbiotic relationship with fungi, he examines the central role plants play in both ecosystems and the regulation of climate. As threats to plant biodiversity mount today, Beerling discusses the resultant implications for food security and climate change, and how these can be avoided. Drawing on the latest exciting scientific findings, including Beerling's own field work in the UK, North America, and New Zealand, and his experimental research programmes over the past decade, this is an exciting new take on how plants greened the continents.

Plants as Persons

Plants as Persons PDF Author: Matthew Hall
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438434308
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Plants are people too? No, but in this work of philosophical botany Matthew Hall challenges readers to reconsider the moral standing of plants, arguing that they are other-than-human persons. Plants constitute the bulk of our visible biomass, underpin all natural ecosystems, and make life on Earth possible. Yet plants are considered passive and insensitive beings rightly placed outside moral consideration. As the human assault on nature continues, more ethical behavior toward plants is needed. Hall surveys Western, Eastern, Pagan, and Indigenous thought as well as modern science for attitudes toward plants, noting the particular resources for plant personhood and those modes of thought which most exclude plants. The most hierarchical systems typically put plants at the bottom, but Hall finds much to support a more positive view of plants. Indeed, some indigenous animisms actually recognize plants as relational, intelligent beings who are the appropriate recipeints of care and respect. New scientific findings encourage this perspective, revealing that plants possess many of the capacities of sentience and mentality traditionally denied them.

Green Planet

Green Planet PDF Author: Stanley A Rice
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813546532
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Plants are not just a pretty part of the landscape; they keep the entire planet, with all of its human and nonhuman inhabitants, alive. Stanley Rice documents the many ways in which plants do this by making oxygen, regulating the greenhouse effect, controlling floods, and producing all the food in the world. Plants also create natural habitats for all organisms in the world. With illustrations and clear writing for non-specialists, Green Planet helps general readers realize that if we are to rescue the Earth from environmental disaster, we must protect wild plants. Beginning with an overview of how human civilization has altered the face of the Earth, particularly by the destruction of forests, the book details the startling consequences of these actions. Rice provides compelling reasons for government officials, economic leaders, and the public to support efforts to save threatened and endangered plants. Global campaigns to solve environmental problems with plants, such as the development of green roofs and the Green Belt Movement—a women's organization in Kenya that empowers communities worldwide to protect the environment—show readers that efforts to save wild plants can be successful and beneficial to the economic well-being of nations. Through current scientific evidence, readers see that plants are vital to the ecological health of our planet and understand what can be done to lead to a better—and greener—future Benefits of plants: Help modulate greenhouse gases Produce almost all oxygen in the air Create cool shade that reduces energy costs Prevent floods, droughts, and soil erosion Produce all of the food in the world Create and preserve soil Create natural habitats Heal the landscape after natural and human disasters

The Life of Plants

The Life of Plants PDF Author: Emanuele Coccia
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509531548
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
We barely talk about them and seldom know their names. Philosophy has always overlooked them; even biology considers them as mere decoration on the tree of life. And yet plants give life to the Earth: they produce the atmosphere that surrounds us, they are the origin of the oxygen that animates us. Plants embody the most direct, elementary connection that life can establish with the world. In this highly original book, Emanuele Coccia argues that, as the very creator of atmosphere, plants occupy the fundamental position from which we should analyze all elements of life. From this standpoint, we can no longer perceive the world as a simple collection of objects or as a universal space containing all things, but as the site of a veritable metaphysical mixture. Since our atmosphere is rendered possible through plants alone, life only perpetuates itself through the very circle of consumption undertaken by plants. In other words, life exists only insofar as it consumes other life, removing any moral or ethical considerations from the equation. In contrast to trends of thought that discuss nature and the cosmos in general terms, Coccia’s account brings the infinitely small together with the infinitely big, offering a radical redefinition of the place of humanity within the realm of life.

Thus Spoke the Plant

Thus Spoke the Plant PDF Author: Monica Gagliano
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1623172438
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
A research scientist’s fascinating study of plant communication reveals how we “have been misunderstanding plants, and ourselves, for all of history” (The Paris Review). “A compelling story of discovery . . . [that] will change the way you see the world”—for fans of The Hidden Life of Trees (Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass) In this “phytobiography”—a collection of stories written in partnership with a plant—research scientist Monica Gagliano shares genuine first-hand accounts from her research into plant communication and cognition. By transcending the view of plants as the objects of scientific materialism, Gagliano encourages us to rethink plants as people—beings with subjectivity, consciousness, and volition, and hence having the capacity for their own perspectives and voices. The book draws on up-close-and-personal encounters with the plants themselves, as well as plant shamans, indigenous elders, and mystics from around the world and integrates these experiences with an incredible research journey and the groundbreaking scientific discoveries that emerged from it. Gagliano has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers on how plants have a Pavlov-like response to stimuli and can learn, remember, and communicate to neighboring plants. She has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, for the first time experimentally demonstrating that plants emit their own 'voices' and, moreover, detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. By demonstrating experimentally that learning is not the exclusive province of animals, Gagliano has re-ignited the discourse on plant subjectivity and ethical and legal standing. This is the story of how she made those discoveries and how the plants helped her along the way.

The World Without Us

The World Without Us PDF Author: Alan Weisman
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312427900
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
A penetrating take on how our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence

Plant Communication from an Ecological Perspective

Plant Communication from an Ecological Perspective PDF Author: František Baluška
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642121624
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Since the concept of allelopathy was introduced almost 100 years ago, research has led to an understanding that plants are involved in complex communicative interactions. They use a battery of different signals that convey plant-relevant information within plant individuals as well as between plants of the same species or different species. The 13 chapters of this volume discuss all these topics from an ecological perspective. Communication between plants allows them to share physiological and ecological information relevant for their survival and ?tness. It is obvious that in these very early days of ecological plant communication research we are illuminating only the ‘tip of iceberg’ of the communicative nature of higher plants. Nevertheless, knowledge on the identity and informative value of volatiles used by plants for communication is increasing with breath-taking speed. Among the most spectacular examples are sit- tions where plant emitters warn neighbours about a danger, increasing their innate immunity, or when herbivore-attacked plants attract the enemies of the herbivores (‘cry for help’ and ‘plant bodyguards’ concepts). It is becoming obvious that plants use not only volatile signals but also diverse water soluble molecules, in the case of plant roots, to safeguard their evolutionary success and accomplish self/non-self kin rec- nition. Importantly, as with all the examples of biocommunication, irrespective of whether signals and signs are transmitted via physical or chemical pathways, plant communication is a rule-governed and sign-mediated process.

The Earth in Her Hands

The Earth in Her Hands PDF Author: Jennifer Jewell
Publisher: Timber Press
ISBN: 1604699027
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
“An empowering and expertly curated look at the horticultural world.” —Gardens Illustrated In this beautiful and empowering book, Jennifer Jewell introduces 75 inspiring women. Working in wide-reaching fields that include botany, floral design, landscape architecture, farming, herbalism, and food justice, these influencers are creating change from the ground up. Profiled women include flower farmer Erin Benzakein; codirector of Soul Fire Farm Leah Penniman; plantswoman Flora Grubb; edible and cultural landscape designer Leslie Bennett; Caribbean-American writer and gardener Jamaica Kincaid; soil scientist Elaine Ingham; landscape designer Ariella Chezar; floral designer Amy Merrick, and many more. Rich with personal stories and insights, Jewell’s portraits reveal a devotion that transcends age, locale, and background, reminding us of the profound role of green growing things in our world—and our lives.